French
President Francois Hollande, left, shakes hands with Russian
President Vladimir Putin after a summit on the Ukraine crisis at
the Elysee Palace in Paris, October 2, 2015.Philippe Wojazer/Reuters

France has declared war on the Islamic State, and it is looking
for partners.

"We must combine our forces to achieve a result that is
already too late in coming," French President Francois
Hollandesaid
in a rousing speech at the Palace of Versailles on Monday,
days after France suffered the deadliest attack
on its soil since World War II, at the hands of assailants linked
to the Islamic State.

France has long resisted going harder against ISIS in Syria for
fear of undermining or eliminating a principal rival of its
longtime enemy, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

But on Monday, Hollande made it clear that the Paris attacks had
forced French officials to reassess their priorities — and accept
that Russia, a longtime ally of Assad, may have an important role
to play.

"The lack of Syrian fighters on the ground that look like
acceptable partners is as true today as it was before the France
bombings," geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer, the president of
Eurasia Group, told Business Insider in an email on Saturday.
"And there won't be enough support for [Western] troops to get it
done alone."

"This puts Russia — and Iran — in a stronger position," Bremmer
added. "And the French are much more likely to take the lead in
working with them than the Americans, especially now."

Bremmer's predictions, so far, are panning out.

'Our enemy is Daesh'

Though France continues to oppose any role for Assad in a
"political solution" for the crisis in Syria, "our enemy is Daesh
(Islamic State)," Hollande said on Monday. In doing so, he
implied that France's priority now, above all, is to
fight ISIS.

People
attend an evening vigil in Place de la Republique following the
series of deadly attacks in Paris, November 15,
2015.REUTERS/Benoit
Tessier

To this end, Hollande announced that he will seek to
form a single coalition against ISIS that
includes Russia and the US — and, implicitly, Iran, which
has been funneling fighters and weapons to the Assad regime since
2011. Such a move would seemingly unite the countries'
counterterrorism operations in Syria for the first
time.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, taking advantage of
this shift in focus away from Assad and toward ISIS,
echoed Hollande's sentiment on Monday.

“It is clear, that to effectively fight this evil we need real
joint efforts by the entire international community,” Putin said
in a statement.

To its point, Russia launched airstrikes against
the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa on Tuesday in what
amounted to its first
significant effort to target the
jihadist group since it began its bombing campaign in late
September.

It is unclear whether the trend will continue. The
airstrikes coincided with Russian cruise-missile attacks
in Aleppo and the Idlib province — where government forces,
aided by Iran-backed Shia militias, have been battling
predominantly non-ISIS rebels.

Reuters

But it undoubtedly plays into Russia's desire
to position itself as a leader in the
region — a role which, up until now, had been
facilitated largely by Moscow's partnership with Tehran.

"Russia and Iran were always going to leverage Sunni jihadi
terrorism to suit their own objectives on the ground in Syria —
namely, shutting down support for Sunni opposition forces
and getting the issue of an Assad transition completely taken off
the table," Tony Badran, a researcher at the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider on
Tuesday.

"But the Russians are pushing up against a door left open
by the Obama administration, which has from day one
been framing its efforts in Syria as a battle against
[Sunni] ISIS so as to not upset [Shia] Iran," Badran
continued.

"Russia has simply taken that narrative and
expanded it to define terrorism in Syria as a Sunni
variety of extremism, in the hopes of backing the few remaining
supporters of the Syrian revolution — such as France
— into a corner."

'Assad is the root cause'

On Monday, US President Barack Obama effectively ruled
out a dramatic shift in the US' ISIS
strategy, saying that putting
more American troops on the ground in
Syria "would be a mistake."

As Bremmer sees it, this is the right approach — for
France and for the US.

"The US is going to need to work with Moscow and back
away from the 'Assad must go' rhetoric," Bremmer said in an
email. "The rebels aren't credible proxies and
the Americans aren't going to get the job done
themselves."

US
President Barack Obama, right, talks with Russian President
Vladimir Putin, left, prior to a session of the G-20 Summit in
Antalya, Turkey, November 16, 2015.Kayhan Ozer/AP

Bremmer pointed to a piece he wrote in The Financial
Times shortly after Russia intervened in Syria, where he
claimed that if the US and its partners want to defeat ISIS
— while limiting their involvement in the region — it will
mean "swallowing the idea that Iran ... is now a
regional powerbroker, that Mr. Assad will remain in power, and
that Russia will play a larger and lasting role in the Middle
East."

But the problem with stepping back from the Middle
East and relinquishing Syria as an Iranian and Russian sphere of
influence, some experts say, is that it will give the
person fueling
the terror groups a new lease on life.

"The big winner from the Paris attacks: Bashar al-Assad,"
Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president of the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies, tweeted
on Monday.

"Barely mentioned among the causes of the Syria war or the
flood of refugees," he added of Assad.

Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at
the International Institute for Strategic Studies, went one
step further, asserting that working with Assad and his
allies will allow ISIS to tighten its grip on the areas it
already controls.

"If you work with Assad [against] ISIS, you lose the
rebels' greater manpower, intelligence, legitimacy among
populations living in ISIS areas," Hokayem said
on Twitter.

A
Syrian refugee holds his newborn baby as he arrives on a raft on
the Greek island of Lesbos.Alkis
Konstantinidis

In an op-ed in The Guardian,
a former French hostage of ISIS echoed Hokayem's
sentiment.

"The Syrian people need security or they themselves will
turn to groups such as ISIS," Nicolas Henin, who spent 10 months
in captivity, wrote on Monday.

"After all that happened to me, I still don’t feel ISIS is
the priority. To my mind, Bashar al-Assad is the
priority. The Syrian president is responsible for the rise of
ISIS in Syria, and so long as his regime is in place,
ISIS cannot be eradicated."

And Rabe Alkhuder, a Syrian
refugee living in Washington, DC,
concurred.

"The Syrian people already hate ISIS," Alkhuder told
Business Insider in
an email. "Fighting and
defeating the group will be much easier and more achievable when
Assad is no longer barrel bombing his own
people into oblivion."

He added: "There is a root cause for every
problem. Assad is the root cause of
this mess, and world leaders must take serious steps to take
him down."